Boulder Latino families seek to preserve history

Descendants of original settlers share photos, artifacts at library

Linda Arroyo-Holmstrom? holds a picture from 1947 of her family gathered in Chatauqua Park. Pictured in the photo are her grandparents and her father, who is the oldest boy to the right of her grandparents. The photo will be on display through October in the main Boulder Public Library as part of the Boulder Latino Families Project.
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JESSICA CUNEO
)

Boulder Latino Families Project

What: Film, reception and living history project

When: 6 p.m. Wednesday

Where: Boulder Public Library, 1001 Arapahoe Ave.

More info: Photo exhibits and displays related to the Boulder Latino Families Project will be on display through October.

For more than half a century, central Boulder was home to a thriving Latino community of miners and farm workers, who found the city offered more opportunity than some of its neighbors.

Today, the area along Canyon Boulevard -- then known as Water Street -- between 17th Street and Folsom Avenue shows little sign of its past, though a few descendants of the original families still live there. Many Boulder residents think of Latinos as recent arrivals to the community.

A group of descendants of the 40 original Latino families are trying to set the record straight and create a legacy for future generations with the Boulder Latino Families Project.

"There isn't really a footprint of our history here," said Linda Arroyo-Holmstrom, whose grandparents settled in Boulder in the 1940s. "It's almost like we're invisible. The story hasn't been told. There are traces of our history, but we want to leave a footprint, a legacy for future generations."

With funding from the Boulder Human Rights Commission, they have collected photos, documents and artifacts that tell their families' stories. Those will be on display at the Boulder Public Library, 1001 Arapahoe Ave., through October.

On Wednesday, they will show the film "Los Inmigrantes: The Immigrants" at the library, and descendants will have family display tables and participate in a living history project. The film, made as a student project in the 1970s, includes interviews with a number of the first Latino families to settle in Boulder. Many of the people featured in the film have since died.

"My grandfather is in it, and he tells the story of his first day working in the mines, of working with a split handle and what it did to his hands," Arroyo-Holmstrom said. "I could hear my grandfather's voice again. It was very powerful."

One of the documents in the exhibit is Canuto Martinez' paystub from the Monarch Mine in Louisville. He earned $27.85, but the mining company deducted money for rent, blasting caps and other materials. The deductions totaled $27.85.

Phil Hernandez, Martinez' grandson, said the third generation is rightly proud of its accomplishments, but it's important to remember the sacrifices of the past.

"It's significant how hard our grandparents and parents had to work and how much they had to sacrifice for us to have a better life," he said.

The exhibit recalls Frank Diaz' hauling company, which he eventually sold to the predecessors of Western Disposal, and it recalls the many military accomplishments of Boulder's Latino families.

They settled in Boulder starting in the 1920s and lived in the central area until the 1970s, when the passing of the older generation and the University of Colorado's need for more student housing led to the neighborhood changing.

Hernandez was a driving force in contacting families and collecting information for the project. He said about a third of the early Latino families in Boulder came directly from Mexico, with the remainder coming from families that had been part of the original Spanish settlements in northern New Mexico and southern Colorado. Some of the families in the project can trace their ancestry in what is now the United States back to the 1600s.

Hernandez' grandparents worked in the mines and as migrant farm workers in Colorado and Nebraska. He lived in Boulder as a young child, and his parents finally settled here for good after his father was injured in a cave-in on the Blue River water project.

His aunt's house at 1926 Water St. served as a stepping stone to self-sufficiency for his parents, as it did for many other members of his family. Young married couples lived there as they were just starting out. So did families struggling with the death of a wage-earner or a parent.

Formal discrimination similar to the South's Jim Crow system was common throughout the western United States. It existed in Boulder, too, but it was less severe, Hernandez said.

"They made a conscious choice to settle in Boulder, because there was less discrimination and better opportunities for employment and, very important, education for their children," he said.

Hernandez graduated from Boulder High School and CU, had a career in human resources and now works as an ombudsmen helping seniors navigate the Medicare system.

Arroyo-Holmstrom taught for nearly 30 years in the Boulder Valley School District and retired last year.

Hernandez said even people who consider themselves liberal don't always realize how deep the region's Hispanic heritage goes. His daughter will get complemented on her English, to which she responds that she ought to speak it well, after four generations here.

But Hernandez said he doesn't like to make distinctions between older and newer arrivals.

"To my mind, what they're going through is the same thing our parents and grandparents went through," he said.

Arroyo-Holmstrom said the story of Boulder's Latino community ultimately is a universal one.

"Our contributions and accomplishments are the American story," she said.

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